I see her as a mass murderer. People have died as a direct result of her bullshit. She ought to be put through the justice system in the same way that someone impersonating a doctor would be tried for a death resulting from his or her false medical advice. Except in her case, it's not just one death, it's a whole lot of deaths. Sure, it's not solely her fault, but it doesn't have to be (nor should it need to be) in our justice system.

Line the makers of Gardisil up on the firing line first. And if you feel strongly about protecting them you are more than welcome to stand in front of them to catch the bullets:)

I have to agree. I'm generally in favor of vaccines, (I had a bad case of chicken pox in my twenties -- I'm told I smelled like rotting meat -- daughter got the chicken pox vaccine) but drew the line at Gardisil. I think that was an illustration that you can't take either side of the argument completely at their word.

Jenny McCarthy couldn't have done it without news and talk shows presenting her views as being just as valid as real medical experts. It isn't so much 'Thanks Jenny' as 'Thanks Oprah for being more interested in ratings than public health'.

I'd say ONLY blame the media for promoting it. It will happen again if the media continues to equate "how famous is this person" with "does this person know what they are talking about?" So there's real importance to blaming the media. There is none for blaming a former playboy model for unscientific views.

Well, I suppose you get to feel smarter than one individual person. Maybe validate some opinions about attractive blonde famous celebrities if that's your thing. I guess one could consider those w

But she's never retracted her position, even though the Dr has been stripped of his license, the study has been retracted and she still continues to preach her message and to gain new followers. For example from Fox News today http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/03/14/kristin-cavallari-defends-decision-not-to-vaccinate-her-son/?intcmp=features

Do we blame her by being misled by the study? No. But once the study was refuted and the findings retracted she refused to change her tune. And so we blame her for using her celebrity status to push a dangerously misguided position that is leading to increased deaths and illnesses that would never have happened had she not pushed her cause and refused to change her position when the study was proven false.

How about denying medical insurance coverage to those that fail to get vaccinated, unless they can demonstrate that they are a member of a recognized religious congregation that specifically is against vaccination as a part of church dogma?

Think of it along the lines of a warranty on an expensive machine being void if the owner fails to follow the maintenance schedule.

And for those that want to argue religious freedom, please bear in mind that even Christian Science, as against intrusive medical care as they are, still has room for its adherents to follow vaccination laws where applicable.

You can't deny coverage in a single-payer system. You just crank up the deductible/copay, for punishment. Accept the consequences of that action or get out of the business of governing.

And those who do not vaccinate are costing us all money in a single-payer system, which is reason to compel vaccination.

Which is reason to decide on a single-payer healthcare system based not on supposed cost savings, nor even charity/indigent care, but on the inevitable loss of individual choice. Remember, those who do no

Remember, those who do not vaccinate their children put their children at risk, but these are THEIR children, not 'ours'.

This is simply not correct. There are a number reasons some children can not be vaccinated, including allergies and other health problems. Generally, if vaccinations are widespread, those that can not be vaccinated will benefit from the herd immunity afforded by general vaccination. When the number of non-vaccinated kids goes up, the effect of the herd immunity goes down putting the children that can not be vaccinated at risk.

Kind of a slippery slope though. Sure it makes sense for most vaccines, but the bigger idea of "if you don't follow our medical advice, you don't get coverage" could lead to all other sorts of unintended outcomes.

I don't ever get the flu shot because it makes me have the same symptoms as the flu the few times I did get it. I know you can't get the flu from the flu shot, but if you get all the same symptoms, you "effectively" have the flu. Should I be denied care in the case where I do get the flu?

Should people who smoke be denied care because they were told many times that it's bad for them? What about people who refuse to eat well, even though they can afford to? What about those people who don't exercise, even though you can do so for free in your own spare time?

that would mean demanding vaccination records for all kids in public schools

We got that around here. Want to go to public school? You must show your vaccination records. Don't want to send your kids to public school? You'd better be using an approved home school system or sending them to private, because you'll get fined or have your children taken from you if you don't educate them. We won't tell you how to educate your children, you just need to have proof that you've been using some form of acceptable education.

I think it is as black and white as I'm making it; we don't allow people to crap on city sidewalks because it's a public health hazard, no matter how strongly they believe that god told them to crap on the sidewalk. You crap on the sidewalk, you get arrested. Plain and simple. Vaccination is really no different.

No matter what a person believes, we don't allow them to kill or maim other people, and it doesn't matter if the tool is a claw hammer or an easily vaccinated disease.

How about denying medical insurance coverage to those that fail to get vaccinated, unless they can demonstrate that they are a member of a recognized religious congregation that specifically is against vaccination as a part of church dogma?

Why make an exception for 'church dogma'? If you willingly subject yourself to unnecessary risks because of 'church dogma' you should be willing and able to bear the consequences of your actions. Surely the ${deity} which instilled this 'church dogma' into its believers

A bit like burning a house down to fireproof it. Allowing them to get sick IS the health hazard we want to avoid. Having people who should be immune carry the diseases just to teach them a lesson is still going to affect immunocompromised people or kids who are too young to be vaccinated.

The problem is that the antivaxers have had their shots. It's their kids that are being put at risk. There is also the problem that they reduce herd immunity and put at risk individuals who are legitimately unable to have vaccinations such as very young babies and those with certain autoimmune diseases.

It goes even further than that. When the virus is allowed to propagate among even a small percentage of the population, there is a chance for that virus to mutate in a manner that renders the vaccine less effective, putting everyone at risk.

Hmm was there a major outcry by people who knew **** all about vaccines regarding MMR and the unfounded notion that it might cause Autism? We had a large outbreak of Measles in the UK recently because people had stopped getting their kids vaccinated. Perhaps the same thing happened on your side of the pond.

As a parent of a child with autism (as well as someone who is likely on the spectrum as well, albeit not diagnosed), I feel qualified to clarify some of this:

Now a spectrum, not a syndrome or disease. This has enlarged the affected population, enhancing the power of their advocates and increasing the urgency of finding a solution;

Autism is a developmental disorder. (It was never a "disease" as that implies being contagious. You'll never "catch" autism from me or my son.) The term "spectrum" is used because autism can describe individuals with vastly different levels of developmental delays. My son is very high functioning, you might not know from a casual observance that he even has autism, until he can't cope any more and melts down because his schedule changed slightly. Other kids with autism around my son's age might be non-verbal or have other, more severe, issues that their parents deal with.

Being blamed (root cause) on vaccines, diet, environmental effects, technology, with a de-emphasis on genetics and prenatal care.

This is only true for the anti-vaxxers and other such groups. Scientists actually investigating the cause of autism are focused on genetics as the primary cause. There might be environmental factors as well, but it looks like those only trigger existing genetic markers. I often liken it to diabetes. You can get diabetes from environmental factors (eating too much high sugar food), but your risk for it is determined by your genes.

Used to describe many more behaviors, hence becoming a 'spectrum', not a syndrome or disease or even a process.

See my first answer as to why it is a spectrum.

Described as a growing treat, capable of potentially impacting a majority of the population, being caused by a multitude of toxins, exposures, and behaviors, hence the urgency to find 'a cure'.

Again, this is just those anti-vaxxer/etc groups. Personally, I don't want to be cured. My brain is just fine as it is. In fact, I credit my autism with helping me program computers. (One of the traits of people with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism is thinking in If-Then terms. Horrible for social situations, but fantastic for working with computers which operate - at a basic level - on an if-then system.)

The "growing threat" is just due to better detection. Were I my son's age now, I'd likely get diagnosed, but back when I was a kid that didn't happen. I was just termed as "shy" and perhaps "weird." I took things too literally ("take off your coat" => I take it off and put it on the floor) and didn't understand why people seemed to "get" this socialization thing where I didn't. It was almost like everyone got some How To Socialize instruction book and they forgot to give one to me. (I could get a diagnosis now, but that would spend money we don't have and wouldn't really help me or my son.)

The best thing for kids with autism is early intervention. Detect it early and give them therapy and other resources to help them deal with the neurotypical world. (That'd be the rest of you who aren't autistic. Never use the term "normal" to someone dealing with autism unless you want an angry diatribe directed at you.)

Herd immunity isn't rubbish. The reason we're worried is because of three things:

1) People who can't be vaccinated due to medical conditions. If you have an immune system disorder or are allergic to the vaccine, you won't be able to be vaccinated. In this case, you need to rely on herd immunity.

2) People who are too young to be vaccinated. Suppose you have an 8 month old baby and plan on vaccinating her. However, the MMR is given at 12 months. So your baby is still susceptible until then.

3) Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Nothing is. However, they are around 99.9% effective. Of course, with millions being vaccinated, this still means that thousands will still be susceptible.

If everyone was vaccinated who could be, herd immunity would protect these other people. When anti-vaxxers first started out, they relied on herd immunity also. Skip the measles vaccine and nothing happens! Because of herd immunity. As the numbers of anti-vaxxers grow, though, herd immunity breaks down and the diseases spread.

If anti-vaxxers were only affecting themselves/their children, I'd take a "it's a personal choice, albeit one I disagree with" stance. Since their choice affects (and kills) other people, though, I don't see this as a right of theirs. You don't have the right to kill someone else's baby because you want to listen to Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy.

Actually, a bunch of the doctors that helped create some of these vaccines did deliberately expose themselve to the diseases as proof to the public that it worked. This was back in first part of the 20th century when people couldn't believe that vaccines actually worked as well as claimed. Go read up on how some of them were created. Back then scientists were hardcore and all about proving their stuff was safe and better for the public at large. They felt they had a committment to society to:

Tell these people a story about a kid that got sick and nearly died because of not being vaccinated. It was recently shown to be effective, which makes sense, since these people seem to think emotionally rather than rationally. Evidence does nothing to convince them.

Neither of those are at all true. Plenty of pediatricians (like ours) refuse to treat willfully unvaccinated kids because of the high risk they present to other patients. If you're taking a two week old baby into the doctor's office for a well baby checkup, the last thing you want to see is some moron's measles vector sitting in the same waiting room. "First, do no harm" nicely dovetails with "by condoning and tolerating anti-science Luddites spreading disease through your office."

This isn't uncommon and most doctors who feel this way make no attempt to hide it [thedailybeast.com]. If nothing else, if a patient doesn't trust their doctor when recommending safe, prudent vaccinations, will they trust that same doctor to recommend emergency surgery or other invasive treatments? If there's not a trust relationship, why even bother with it?

Anti-vaxxers should come to expect that their rejection of science leaves them to see only homeopaths and other witch doctors because science-based ones won't touch them with a 10 foot pole. If they want to practice voodoo, why should they want or expect to receive all the other benefits of legitimate medicine?

OMG measles is like a 1700's pirate disease. Nobody catches it anymore. That's ridiculous. The government is just injecting nano-bots into your bloodstream to spy on you and make you eat fatty foods so you die before they can pay you social security and...*cough*...*dies from measles*

Those who are against vaccination believe there is a connection. I think it could be easier to convince them that vaccination is the lesser of two evils than that there is, in fact, no connection.

A slogan that says something along the lines of 'Death from measles or autism, which is best for your child?' might be more successful with these people than 'the evidence does not support a link between vaccination and autism'

- free vaccinations
- no insurance coverage for treatment if you are not vaccinated
- fines for not vaccinating your children

That leaves stupidity as the only reason not to get vaccinated. Hopefully the money collected from those fines is then used to do something about the stupidity.

If the fines then become an incentive for parents to not treat their children, there should be child abuse laws for not giving your child required medical care that kick in. You could also reverse it, i.e. a tax deduction fo

And you would most assuredly be wrong. Certainly not recently. We are quite careful about what we eat, tending only to eat those things God fashioned and directed us to eat.

God provided me with a cheeseburger yesterday, and it was aluminumally delicious.

Yes, I'm making fun of you. All opinions aren't equal, and yours is incredibly naive and dangerous. You're endangering your kids for no legitimate reason, you're a bad parent, and I have no desire to be tactful about this idiocy anymore.

I don't see how we could get through to them, they've already jumped the bandwagon on at least one dubious claim, facts and research clearly aren't swaying these people. Letting them contract the disease and then tell them why they can't be cured of it, and may die, might have a much larger impact. Sucks that it has to put the rest of us at risk first though.

Maybe we'll have the capability to cheaply trace each confirmed case back to the source through the DNA of diseases. Turn a few ambulance chasing lawyers loose on folks causing outbreaks for whatever reason and a few people might change their tune.

Maybe we'll have the capability to cheaply trace each confirmed case back to the source through the DNA of diseases. Turn a few ambulance chasing lawyers loose on folks causing outbreaks for whatever reason and a few people might change their tune.

Punishing the victims. The people who need to be punished are the conmen who promote the anti-vaccine agenda. They are all making bank off of books, interviews, paid lectures, etc.

The whole idea of vaccinations is that they make it impossible for a disease to spread through a community, that it'll die in its current host before it finds another person who either didn't gain immunity from the vaccine or couldn't be vaccinated for medical reasons. You don't get that benefit at low coverage rates.

Unfortunately, I don't think anything will get through to them until their kids and loved ones start dying from very old and highly preventable diseases.

Their mindset is one much like the followers of creationism, etc where they believe that:1) All scientists have been bought out by "big pharma" or 2) That the consensus among the scientific community is some kind of organized ploy to sell more and more drugs.

Because of this, no matter what scientists or public health officials say, they just plug their ears and go "LALALALALA".

Easy... ever heard of the phrase "I say we take the safety labels off of all products and let the problem sort itself out"?

I know several people that refuse to vaccinate their children. They don't care what evidence you provide. They will argue until the day they die that vaccines cause autism. You can't argue with that level of conviction(or stupidity).

Yes, there's a good chance we're going to lose people that were vaccinated and still caught th

The best way to handle this is for the original author of the paper that started this anti-vaccination mess, Andrew Wakefield, come out and give a public statement indicating that:

1. Apologize for the fact that his study was flawed, and explain why.

2. That no other study has established any material basis in any respect for a link between autism and vaccines or their components.

3. The original funding for this supposed research was made by lawyers who were attempting to find reason to litigate against vaccine manufacturers.

4. That many people will now die of diseases that were nearly eradicated a mere 15 years ago similar to smallpox a few years before it was eradicated.

Put that as a public service announcement on every major TV and radio channel, and online as well, as widely as possible. Show pictures of what happens when people don't vaccinate, particularly to children, the elderly and immune-compromised individuals (e.g. transplant saved his/her life, now they die). Have him make this appeal over and over again until people get this.

Even if we don't get to 100%, we owe it to everyone around us. The public health costs are staggering, and the stupidity is mind boggling.

1. Andrew Wakefield is unapologetic and still claims that his study was valid. He vocally blames a conspiracy theory for his problems.

2. After so long of playing the "conspiracy" card, if he were to suddenly recant now his followers would most likely decide that he's been "gotten to" by the Illuminati (etc.). It is very unlikely they'd all go "Oh it was a mistake? Good to know, we'll just get off to the GP's for a full round of vaccinations then".

Unfortunately vaccination is one of those issues where their mistake (loss of group immunity) hurts someone else (endemic measles finds a ward of immunocompromised patients). That's why it's a social issue, not an individual one.

Point fingers at "anti-vaxxers" all you want, that's not the root of the issue (not to say that it's not an issue). So long as we keep cramming more and more humans into smaller and smaller areas, we're just begging for a pandemic to come through and wipe out a fair amount of the population.

Think about new "super-diseases" like MRSA, or H041 Gonorrhea, which some experts are saying is a worse STD than AIDS. [rt.com]

No vaccination is going to save you from disease-related death if you're all crammed together like cat

Oh rubbish. People lived in far closer proximity in medieval times than they do now. Apart from the black death which only happened once in a big way with a few smaller outbreaks over the centuries and spanish flu (which isn't bothered by proximity anyway), there haven't been any major pandemics that have come close to wiping us out.

So you're expecting an outbreak of smallpox any day now then, as soon as the population density hits a certain point?

Measles is highly contagious disease which is preventable with a simple vaccine, and it was getting tantalisingly close to the point of being eradicated. Now less people are getting vaccinated, and the number of cases are on the up. That is not a coincidence.

If we could come up with effective and lasting vaccines for MRSA of H041 Gonorrhea, we could wipe them out with a sufficiently widesprea

I've heard it said before that preventable disease outbreaks like this happen because children who are typically not yet old enough to be vaccinated come into contact with a more mature individual who was never vaccinated.

If so, it seems to me that the only reason this kind of thing keeps happening is because of THEIR choice... and their choice is directly affecting the lives of other children that they could communicate the disease to.

Ok, so *you think* your kid might become autistic, if vaccinated.... Better to have a live autistic child than one that is dead from whooping cough.

When it came time to discuss this with our DR, she said to us, "You don't want to see what it's like to watch a child die from whooping cough." It took about 2 seconds for my wife and I to process that, and decide what the larger risk is.

If you don't vaccinate your child, fine. But if you reject society like that then expect society to reject you.

No vaccination? Forbidden from attending school. Forbidden from visiting a doctor. Forbidden from visiting any public facilities like libraries, train stations, or airports. Forbidden from riding a bus or train or taxi.

Shunning might work. Unvaccinated kids don't pose a medical danger to vaccinated kids, but they are a potential emotional liability since they may die for a tragically preventable reason. If we say we don't want our vaccinated kids to get close to unvaccinated kids to avoid a possible emotional wound, then that places a lot of social pressure on the issue. Shunning is one of the cruelest things to do, so we ought to be sure the problem is really worth taking such steps. It's been working for smoking though.

I've always known some people that were stupid enough to fall for this garbage. And I always told them how dumb they were being. But now I have my own kid. Now, I ask... "Is your kid vaccinated?" and if not they are not allowed in my house, and not allowed around my kid unless mandated by law (school) One couple got mad at me, and I finally just told them to go screw themselves. The life of my child is not worth maintaining your pseudoscience addled minds fantasy. I'm sick of it, and everyone else should be to. Ostracize these people and their kids. Do not allow them near you. The only thing that will fix this insane fad is peer pressure.

My wife and I home school our two daughters. There is a home school support group in our area that is frequented by several anti-vaccine families. My daughters are up to date on their vaccines and we don't associate with the anti-vax nut jobs. Please don't assume that all home schoolers are anti-vax.

I'm not a homeschooler (all my kids are in public), but I've known a few. One of my best friends is a family practice doc. His family homeschools because they believe they can give a better education than the local schools in his small town, but he's adamantly in favor of vaccination.